Blessed assurance – Day 2

“Abide with me” is a hymn you may recognise from funerals or, if you’re a football fan, from the FA Cup Final where the first and third verses have been sung before kick off since 1927.

It’s an obvious choice for a funeral hymn; it speaks of dusk, of falling eventide, deepening darkness, growing dimness and fading glories. Furthermore, it was written by Henry Francis Lyte as he was dying of tuberculosis. He wrote this poem as a prayer to Christ, echoing the words of the disciples in Luke 24 as they walked along the road to Emmaus with the risen Jesus.

But the disciples’ request to Jesus, echoed in Lyte’s hymn, are not just words for the dying, they are words for us, today. One of the verses of “Abide with me” goes like this:

“I need Thy presence every passing hour.
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.”

This hymn reminds us to plead with our Lord to abide with us, to stay with us. To be there, unchanging, when everything around us changes. To stay with us through cloud and sunshine, through our joys and sorrows. When we desire God’s presence, he will reveal himself to us, just as he did to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. He will reassure us as he did them in Matthew 28:20, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”